'Take the guns first, go through due process second,' as our president once quipped, is not due process. It is over-due process: Opposing view

There are rarely easy answers in sound public policy, but tragedies often drive bad answers. Such is the case with “red flag” laws, which offend our rights, violate fundamental assumptions about a person’s innocence and create new opportunities for abuse.

Red flag laws are simply bad policy. In Connecticut, in at least one-third of confiscation cases where the gun owner eventually contests the order, it is overturned. Many people who have their property seized never get it back, because petitioning the government for the return of firearms requires an expensive lawyer. And criminal law can disproportionately affect the poor — the very same people most likely to be violently victimized.

These red flag proposals wouldn’t be imposed in an otherwise perfect country. They would be imposed in a nation where many law enforcement agencies have become extraordinarily militarized. In one case, for example, someone was killed during enforcement of a red flag order.

Red flag laws stand for the proposition that people can have their rights and property taken from them on the basis of mere allegations. No reasonable suspicion needed. And even if you don’t believe the right to keep and bear arms exists at all, or it is of little importance to you, do you really want this government to extend a relaxed notion of seizure and inverted due process to other areas of law? Because history shows it will.

A police detective in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 6, 2019.(Photo: John Minchillo/AP)

Due process is a fundamental cornerstone of American law. Except when it comes to your right to competently defend yourself, apparently. “Take the guns first, go through due process second,” as our president once quipped, is not due process. It is over-due process.

I have no doubt that people on the other side of this issue genuinely want to “do something.” What I doubt is that they have given due consideration to the tremendous costs red flag laws impose on our society, communities and civil liberties.

Matthew Larosiere is the director of legal policy for the Firearms Policy Coalition and a senior contributor to Young Voices.